Does the United States Want To Survive?

It is said that before the Civil War of 1861-65, the United States was spoken of in the plural. “The United States are not disposed to accept…” The principle of e pluribus unum was taken literally: this was a federation of many states, some of which were struggling toward modernity while others instituted and entrenched and attempted to spread a system of oppression and servitude worse than any known in medieval Europe. After all the bloodshed, the Union reigned supreme and forbade slavery in its first act as a newly strengthened nation. The United States is not disposed to accept slavery and armed rebellion. But too many of its White citizens were and are not disposed to accept their Black fellow citizens as equals, a major root cause of our present plague of terrorism and disunion.

Well then. Does the United States want to survive?

The January 6 Committee has referred four criminal charges against Donald Trump to the Justice Department, for fomenting and directing an armed rebellion against the United States. The answer to my far from rhetorical question is unknowable, until we know what becomes of those grave charges.

If the Justice Department brings charges against Trump, and a jury convicts him, and he goes to prison, then yes, the United States wants to survive. If not, then it is sending the message that you can raise an armed rebellion against the United States, and get away with it. Which guarantees that someone else if not Trump himself will try again, very soon. Which means that the United States will not survive, because the record of the last five years proves that they cannot impose a dictatorship, a Slaveocracy 2.0, and the country will disintegrate if they try. It’s as simple as that.

Does the United States want to survive? Why did one of Trump’s loudest defenders, Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina, warn of violence if he is held to account? The same South Carolina where the first shots were fired, in 1861? They say that history does not repeat, it rhymes, but what is the meaning of such an eerily precise rhyme? What year is this, anyway?

Does the United States want to survive? It seems like a simple question. The answer, evidently, is far from simple, and only time and events will reveal it.

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